► It has been shown that it is surprisingly difficult to match a photograph of a face to a live face and neither humans nor machines…
(more)

▼ It has been shown that it is surprisingly difficult to match a photograph of a face to a live face and neither humans nor machines can do this reliably. However, experimental research has allowed us to explore facial recognition and find ways to improve it. The natural image inconsistencies in lighting, expression and colour, pose problems for facial recognition from photos. Prototyped images which are created by merging several photographs of one person are found to stabilise facial appearance and have an advantage over normal photographs in tests of face recognition. It has also been suggested that when images are caricatured, which involves exaggerating spatial differences between individual faces and an average norm face, this can also improve recognition. Furthermore, one view which is introduced in this study is that images which are of a good likeness of one individual are more efficiently recognised over images which are a bad likeness. The present study involved three experiments. The first was a likeness rating task where participants rated images of familiar faces in relation to how alike they were to their own memory of what that person looks like. These ratings were used to construct stimuli for experiments two and three, which were name-verification tasks. The difference between the two tasks was the duration in which the stimulus was shown, the first was for 33ms and the second for 100ms. The results for both experiments showed that there was a main effect of likeness, the good likeness stimuli were recognised faster and more accurately than the bad likeness stimuli. There was also a main effect of caricatures for the third experiment which found that caricatures were recognised faster than non-caricatured images. Overall, no main effect of prototyped stimuli was found, yet further effects were found in the interactions between factors.
Advisors/Committee Members: MacKenzie, Graham.

Manson, C. (2012). The Good, the Bad and the Influence on Prototypes and Caricatures: The Effect of Likeness in the Recognition of Familiar Faces. (Thesis). University of Edinburgh. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8397

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Manson, Chantelle. “The Good, the Bad and the Influence on Prototypes and Caricatures: The Effect of Likeness in the Recognition of Familiar Faces.” 2012. Thesis, University of Edinburgh. Accessed January 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8397.

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

MLA Handbook (7th Edition):

Manson, Chantelle. “The Good, the Bad and the Influence on Prototypes and Caricatures: The Effect of Likeness in the Recognition of Familiar Faces.” 2012. Web. 21 Jan 2019.

Vancouver:

Manson C. The Good, the Bad and the Influence on Prototypes and Caricatures: The Effect of Likeness in the Recognition of Familiar Faces. [Internet] [Thesis]. University of Edinburgh; 2012. [cited 2019 Jan 21].
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8397.

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Council of Science Editors:

Manson C. The Good, the Bad and the Influence on Prototypes and Caricatures: The Effect of Likeness in the Recognition of Familiar Faces. [Thesis]. University of Edinburgh; 2012. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8397

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

University of Victoria

3.
Chapco, Stephen A. W.Traitors, Harlots and Monsters: The Anti-Aristocratic Caricatures of the French Revolution.

► The opening of the Estates General in 1789 came at a time of momentous national crisis. France’s separate Three Estates were summoned to meet and…
(more)

▼ The opening of the Estates General in 1789 came at a time of momentous national crisis. France’s separate Three Estates were summoned to meet and collectively decide about how best to remedy France’s many ills. However, the initial collegial spirit between the privileged First and Second Estates and the assertive Third Estate quickly evaporated. Antipathy towards certain nobles, particularly those perceived as corrupt and debauched, quickly crystalized in 1789 into hostile attacks on the entire Second Estate, who were all labeled dangerous “aristocrats”.
The rapid disempowerment of one of Europe’s strongest élites is difficult to interpret without discussing the important role of widely produced anti-noble caricatures that targeted France’s nobility. Anti-noble caricatures, ranging from the malicious to the comical, were an essential component in the rapid sidelining and demonization of the nobility. From approximately 1789-1793 anti-noble caricatures constantly degraded and demonized their targets, in unrelenting and accessible imagery, marking them out as traitorous enemies. Caricatures not only helped convince the public that nobles were not only inhuman, but so dangerous in fact, that persecution and violence became options in order to purge France of its alleged aristocratic fifth columnists.
Advisors/Committee Members: Walshaw, Jill Maciak (supervisor), Alexander, R. S. (supervisor).

Chapco, S. A. W. (2015). Traitors, Harlots and Monsters: The Anti-Aristocratic Caricatures of the French Revolution. (Masters Thesis). University of Victoria. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1828/6669

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Chapco, Stephen A W. “Traitors, Harlots and Monsters: The Anti-Aristocratic Caricatures of the French Revolution.” 2015. Masters Thesis, University of Victoria. Accessed January 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/1828/6669.

MLA Handbook (7th Edition):

Chapco, Stephen A W. “Traitors, Harlots and Monsters: The Anti-Aristocratic Caricatures of the French Revolution.” 2015. Web. 21 Jan 2019.

► Face recognition is a complex process that many perceptual factors can affect the face recognition judgment. Distinctiveness has been identified one of the perceptual factors…
(more)

▼ Face recognition is a complex process that many perceptual factors can affect the face recognition judgment. Distinctiveness has been identified one of the perceptual factors that affect recognition. Many researches have attempted to improve face recognition by manipulating the image stimuli, such as using caricatures that exaggerate distinctive features of a face. However, the caricature effect was not found consistent throughout those studies. Another technique of manipulating the stimuli is the prototypical process, which averages a set of images and eliminating any transient features that are not found consistent throughout the set of images. This averaging technique is hypothesized as one of the explanation to account for the inconsistent results of the caricature advantage. 40 British university students took part in the celebrity name-verification task. Four conditions were created in the task, as photo veridical, photo caricature, prototype veridical and prototype caricature. The experiment found the prototype effect was significant but failed to find a significant caricature advantage. The results showed that participants performed best in prototype caricature. A proposal is made in attempt to incorporate the prototype and the distractors on images into the multidimensional face space framework (MDS). It is suggested that all images are under the influence of distractors, such as lighting and make up, that are not consistently found in all images. These distractors are regarded as noises that interfere the process of recognition. By reducing the noises via the averaging process, the recognition of face, in terms of accuracy and reaction time, is improved on these prototypes. Therefore, this may account for why some researches failed to find the caricature advantage. The results of the experiment hopes to shed light on how to improve the image stimuli quality, and to investigate how the prototypes affect other perceptual factors such as familiarity and best likeness.
Advisors/Committee Members: Graham, Mackenzie.

► The current research aimed to further explore both the prototype effect and a caricature advantage of famous faces across three studies; a likeness rating task…
(more)

▼ The current research aimed to further explore both the prototype effect and a caricature advantage of famous faces across three studies; a likeness rating task (experiment 1) and name-verification task (experiments 2 & 3). All three studies used photograph and prototype stimuli which were caricatured and anti-caricatured to 30% and 60% away from a gender-specific norm. In experiment one likeness ratings were recorded. Contrary to previous research, no prototype advantage was found, with veridical photographs perceived as better likeness. Additionally, neither a photograph nor prototype caricature was perceived as a better likeness. The current paper does not support a prototype advantage for face likeness, and suggests that photographs are closer to the mental representation held for an identity, which may be due to the high quality of photographic stimuli. In experiments two and three, accuracy and response-time for correctly matched stimuli were recorded, with stimuli presentation time differing in name-verification studies (200ms vs. 50ms). In line with some of the previous research, no caricature effects were observed for photograph stimuli, either for the speed and accuracy of identification, with manipulations of 60% caricaturing actually producing a decrease in performance. Contrary to previous claims, presenting stimuli for a shorter duration did not appear to significantly enhance a caricature effect. Similarly, no caricature effects were observed for prototypical stimuli, although linear trends suggest some increase in both speed of identification and accuracy as a result of caricaturing. Overall, these findings add little support for the norm-based face-space model, which suggested distinctive faces should be identified better than typical faces, or for the use of prototypical images over veridical photographs as a means of identification.
Advisors/Committee Members: MacKenzie, Graham.

▼ Commencing with caricature and reductive imaging techniques, this research explores parallel tendencies evident within broader culture. The thesis argues this reductive predisposition became broader and more prominent during Modernism, the digital revolution of the 1990s, and is strongly manifest within various aspects of contemporary art and culture. Theorized as the ‘Cult of Reduction’ this tendency is both a cultural condition, and a studio methodology employed to create two dimensional projected animation and digital prints.

► This dissertation is a study of the practice of musical paraphrase in the long 20th century. Musical paraphrase is defined as the adaptation, alteration, or…
(more)

▼ This dissertation is a study of the practice of musical paraphrase in the long 20th century. Musical paraphrase is defined as the adaptation, alteration, or embellishment of musical material, often borrowed from another source. My project is built around a single guiding question: If a composer borrows music from another source and alters it for use in a new context, how is this accomplished, and what are their motivations for doing so? This collection of five case studies provides a representative (if not comprehensive) sample of the many practices we might call paraphrase. In Chapter 1, I explore the metaphor of musical translation. In Chapter 2, I examine the practice of altering music for use on television, which I call "copyphrase." Chapter 3 is a study of musical caricature. The final two chapters are about musical paraphrase as creative stimulus – using pre-existing music as the aesthetic point of departure for crafting something new. In Chapter 4, I focus on the film music of John Williams, and in Chapter 5, I explore the late works of Alban Berg.

During his career from the Second Empire to 1926, Albert Robida (1848-1926) took an active part in a hundred and seven newspapers and illustrated ninety-four books. He acquired a creative self-sufficiency by founding, in 1880, his own satirical newspaper, La Caricature, and by publishing forty-seven works which he himself wrote and illustrated. His career and his drawings express the strong tension between tradition and modernity in the Parisian world of edition from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. His present fame is mainly due to Le Vingtième siècle (1883), the first of his works of science-fiction. Through this new form, Robida renders a satire of his time, while offering a dystopic vision of a society run by mechanization. Although he foresaw the media possibilities in animated pictures in the early 1880's, he defended his traditional graphic practice which will be examined in the art history angle. To resolve this paradox, his graphic production has been analyzed according to three further axes of research. The first one is about the distribution of his pictures in the publishing sector through newspapers, books or etchings. The second one is focused on the peculiarity of Robida in the “fin de siècle”. It…

The word parody has been coined during classical antiquity and has since been considered mostly as a literary genre or figure. Nevertheless, numerous plastic artists are making use of its forms, processes and connotations. During the 1960s decade, the advent of consumerism and its effects on the work of art duplicability gave a new rise to parody. Reproducibility allowed the transformation of history of arts into a vast repertoire in which one may draw to create from and thus, offered a fertile ground for parodic creation. This study focuses on understanding why and how such a wide range of artists are taking advantage of parody for personal or contextual ends from the 1960s to nowadays. The first part of this study is articulated around the precise definition of the term and a chronological view of the parodic art since the middle of the 19th century, from the Salons caricaturaux to postmodernism including historical avant- gardes. The notions of playfulness, comic and satiric will be discussed in the second part, in order to grasp the multiple shades of parody. The third and last part is devoted to the specular aspect of parody that leads to a questioning of the artistic institutions and aims to unveil the artistic practices themselves. Across these pages, parody appears as an…

Moral caricature definitely appears in Madrid in Gil Blas. It first focuses on the question of woman, scrutinising bodily differences. Caricaturists denounce the deceptive appearances of the bourgeois female body and uncover the male discourse about the spending on garments. Thus they indirectly offer a discourse on the male condition, through criticising marriage. The body of lower-class women is affected by work, precariousness, vulnerability and loneliness –circumstances meaning that the danger of prostitution is ever present. Prostitution is also indicated by the ritualisation visible in the body of the cocotte. Moral caricature becomes both erotic and humorous while showing more and more streetwalkers, who embody the status of the commercial image of woman. The social dimension of the female body disappears. Seduction scenes in which the caricaturist unveils the hypocrite game of the commerce of flesh are replaced by images which seduce. The predominance of the cocotte ushers in new habits of consumption. Among the many diverse images of woman that circulate in the second half of the 19th century, massively diffused caricatures play a decisive role.

During the July Monarchy, French romantic writers used critical essays to express their desire to create new typical characters, or « types ». According to them, the ability of a novel to create new « types » is a sign of literary value. This work studies the esthetical meaning of the word « type » and the way novels written by Stendhal, Vigny, Hugo, Sand, Musset, Balzac, Dumas, Eugène Sue and Théophile Gautier make a character into a « type ». This term appears in satirical newspapers and « Physiologies » at the same time and this dissertation aims at explaining the links between visual « types » in caricature and litterary « types » in novels. This work also tries to underline the differences and similarities between romantic and sociological « types ».

This dissertation analyses the iconographic series of cartoons and caricatures under the general title of Os Zéróis by the graphic artist Ziraldo Alves Pinto, between the years 1967 and 1972. As a parody of superheroes from North American comics such as Superman, Batman, Captain America , Os Zérois provides a critical perspective to the ideals and values transmitted by these characters. In this sense, they are located at first, by principle and method, in the historical and political context in which they were designed: the Cold War, as international context, and the civil-military dictatorship, at the national level. With this approach, one intends to understand the strategies used by Ziraldo to remain active even in an adverse scenario considering the censorship of the Military Regime. In the following moment, the analyzis of Ziraldo\'s professional trajectory is started, especially in regard to the production of national comics whose climax was Pererê magazine (1960-1964), reaching the Os Zéróis in 1967 until 1972.

A caricature is an exaggeration of distinctive facial features and is generally recognized just as well as an undistorted photograph of a face. Caricatures can be generated by exaggerating the differences between a face and a prototypical face (average face) and an anticaricature can be generated by reducing those differences. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a degree of caricaturing that best captures facial likeness. Moreover, we investigated the role of holistic perception versus componential perception in the facial recognition process. Six prototypical faces, three male and three female, were generated by morphing photographs of Brazilian people from the region of Ribeirão Preto-SP of different races: black, white and mixed race. Two types of caricatures and anticaricatures were generated: 1, holistic: by manipulating of all the differences between a face and the…

► This thesis develops a body of creative work that presents its findings as an illustrated commentary on New Zealand Fashion Week. The research asks the…
(more)

▼ This thesis develops a body of creative work that presents its findings as an illustrated commentary on New Zealand Fashion Week. The research asks the question, “what is the potential of illustration in communicating the content and context of a fashion event?” Accordingly, the thesis outcome, Illus tration as Inquiry: A visual response to New Zealand Fashion Week, is formatted as a bound text that utilises an illustrator’s approach to Horatian satire. The illustrator’s voice is employed as a subjective but informed tool for analysis. In developing a visual dialect, it renegotiates certain conventions in fashion illustration as they relate to pose, form, subject and pro portion.
Advisors/Committee Members: Ings, Welby (advisor), Mousdale, Chris (advisor), Jones, Linda (advisor).

► The work of the Marxist cultural historian Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940) has been criticised for its inconsistent application of historical materialism to the fields of caricature…
(more)

▼ The work of the Marxist cultural historian Eduard
Fuchs (1870-1940) has been criticised for its inconsistent
application of historical materialism to the fields of caricature
and erotica. Although this criticism does have some merit, the
question of whether Fuchs treats caricature in a dialectical
fashion remains insufficiently answered. To address this I examine
Fuchs’ early study on the caricature of 1848, published on the
fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution. My approach is also
grounded in historical materialism, and uses the concept of the
dialectical image to re-evaluate the interaction of image and text
in his publications. My goals in this research are therefore
twofold: first, to define the dialectical image and demonstrate how
caricature presents a dialectical image of the past; and secondly,
to determine to what degree Fuchs has achieved this in his study of
the caricature of 1848.

Nikolic, M. (2014). The Dialectical Image of Caricature: Eduard Fuchs and the
March Revolution of 1848. (Masters Thesis). University of Alberta. Retrieved from https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/m613mz91w

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Nikolic, Misa. “The Dialectical Image of Caricature: Eduard Fuchs and the
March Revolution of 1848.” 2014. Masters Thesis, University of Alberta. Accessed January 21, 2019.
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/m613mz91w.

Nikolic M. The Dialectical Image of Caricature: Eduard Fuchs and the
March Revolution of 1848. [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Alberta; 2014. [cited 2019 Jan 21].
Available from: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/m613mz91w.

Council of Science Editors:

Nikolic M. The Dialectical Image of Caricature: Eduard Fuchs and the
March Revolution of 1848. [Masters Thesis]. University of Alberta; 2014. Available from: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/m613mz91w

Caricature as separate genre started forming
in Europe, in Renaissace art (works of Leonardo da Vinci, Bosch).
Development of caricature over Europe intensified in XIX th
century. There was created many political, societal and iconic
caricatures. In Lithuania first caricaturical attribution drawings
appeared in XVI th century. Initiator is reputed to be Jonas
Rustemas. In XIX th century in Lithuania appeared more creators of
caricature, but only in the third decade of XX th century,
caricature found it’s place in Lithuania’s art. In period of 1921 –
1940 there were publishing 15 satirical journals in Lithuania. In
1934 appeared the first issue of famous journal „Šluota“. Most
notable lithuanian caricaturists are: Stepas Žukas, Olinaras
Penčyla, Telesforas Kulakauskas. Nowdays caricatures are still
published in daily papers such as „Lietuvos rytas, „Lietuvos
Aidas“, „Respublika“ and some others. More than 100 "theories" of
humor have been identified in the World.These notions include
general theories about humor or laughter, statements of the
circumstances in which humor may occur, and characterizations or
descriptions. But most popular and mentioned ones are three:
superiority theory, which suggest that people laugh at others to
whom they feel superior, incongruity theory, which suggest that
humor consists of incongruous events and situations and release (or
relief) theory, which suggest that humor is experienced when people
are relieved from strain or stress. Adolescence... [to full
text]

The latest local and international conflicts
forced to look back to the democratic society’s value – freedom of
speech. Different conceptions become an axis of the conflict, so
the role of media is very important in constructing and presenting
it. That’s why this work’s goal is to research specific
international event, Mohammed’s cartoon controversy in Lithuanian
media, and to define the reactions and opinions which reflect the
freedom of speech problematic. At first, the research was
concentrated on democratic media conception, freedom of speech and
there fundamental changes in modern technology age. Further,
looking for the connection between freedom of speech and political
caricature genre, it is tried to reflect the controversial
connection. At the same time, I try to present the Mohammed’s
cartoon controversy and reactions of it in foreign media. Last,
this international event is analyzed in certain Lithuanian press
and internet media, trying to characterize certain attributes from
other countries and determine the dominated position in freedom of
speech frame. The basic work’s object is Mohammed’s cartoon
controversy in Lithuanian media. The investigation is made by using
quantity and quality content analyzes. This type of this method
gives the ability to look deeper in certain media tools and there
affect to construction of international event, trying to stimulate
international discus and compare data in international context.
General research conclusions show that... [to full
text]

The Salon caricatural was a comic review consisting of caricatures of art works exposed at the Salon. The first Salons caricaturaux appeared in the early 1840s, and it was under the Second Empire that this type of parodic review reached its height, obtaining success in the illustrated satirical press. Under the pretext of humor, this critique in images provided an efficient method of judging art, working in counterpoint to written art criticism. The critical issues proposed by this comical imagery were in fact the products of debates on the relationship between image and text, as the three 1846 models reveal. Conscious of contemporary artistic currents in art, Salon caricatural cartoonists often played multiple roles; at times inoffensive mocker, at times serious critic, and at times exposing artist. These parodic reviews reflected not only the characteristic reaction of the bourgeois public, but also on occasion the personal tastes and aesthetic judgments of the cartoonists themselves with respect to contemporary works of art. With art in a major period of transition during the Second Empire, the Salon caricatural actively participated in the reception of art through a sarcastic format that translated both the distaste for the declining classical school and the rejection of innovative forms, notably those of Courbet and his realism. This humorous and peculiar version of art history also provides a new perspective to the history of art criticism.

The intensity of the crisis brought about by the Dreyfus affair is a proven fact. The press plays a major role. Caricaturists, in particular, contribute their images to daily and periodical publications, books, postcards and posters. The range of styles is wide. After some hesitation – which can be very short - their contributions are constructed engagements of either attack or defence. While some are undecided or indifferent, others resort to humour. We can also see elements of duplicity. At a golden era for the press, iconography of the Dreyfus affair can be seen in numerous newspapers. The images, which have been analysed since the first signs of the Affair, show a society tormented by the defeat of 1870, a patriotism sometimes sustained by a spirit of revenge and an unstable thirty-year old Republic. They also illustrate the extremely demonstrative increase in anti-Semitism and in a multifaceted nationalism ; reinvigorated by a crisis polishing up its arms against the regime. This thesis studies, first and foremost, the careers of the caricaturists in order to appreciate the impact of the Affair on their art. Secondly, it explores the evolution of the presentation of major actors in the Affair; in particular Émile Zola, Joseph Reinach and Henri Rochefort.

► Critics of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice often tend to focus on the central characters but focus in this essay will be on the…
(more)

▼ Critics of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice often tend to focus on the central characters but focus in this essay will be on the middle sister Mary Bennet. Author Alex Woloch claims in his book The One vs. the Many that Mary’s main function in the novel is to be a contrast to Elizabeth in order to fulfill her as a character. The purpose of this essay is then to show that Mary is an important character and what it is that makes Mary’s character different from her sisters’. A close reading of the novel has been applied in order to analyze Mary’s character and her function in the novel.The essay will show that Mary could be read as a representation of the women of her time who had more faith in themselves than to rely on men in order to have a secure future.

► Techniques for facial expression generation are employed in several applications in computer graphics as well as in the processing of image and video sequences containing…
(more)

▼ Techniques for facial expression generation are employed in several applications in computer graphics as well as in the processing of image and video sequences containing faces. Video coding standards such as MPEG-4 support facial expression animation. There are a number of facial expression representations that are application dependent or facial animation standard dependent and most of them require a lot of computational effort. We have developed
a completely novel and effective method for representing the primary facial expressions using a model-independent set of deformation parameters (derived using rubber-sheet transformations), which can be easily applied to transform facial feature points. The developed mathematical model captures the necessary non-linear characteristics of deformations of facial muscle regions; producing well-recognizable expressions on images, sketches, and three dimensional models of faces. To show the effectiveness of the method, we developed a variety of novel applications such as facial expression recognition, expression mapping, facial animation and caricature generation.